© 2014 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
2) LOVE, HISTORICAL PRODUCT OF HUMAN EVOUBTION
The analysis made above of the synthesizing power of love in matters of interior life was not made, — it could not be, — without our having a model before our eyes.
Where then, in current Nature, is there a first sketch, a first approach, of the total act of which we seemed to dream?
Nowhere more distinct, it seems to me, than in the act of Christian charity, such as can be posed by a modern believer for whom creation has become expressible in terms of Evolution. In the eyes of such a believer, the history of the World presents itself as a vast cosmogenesis, during which all the fibers of the Real converge, without merging, in a Christ at once personal and universal. Rigorously and without metaphor, the Christian who understands both the essence of his Creed and the spatio-temporal connections of Nature, finds himself in the blessed situation of being able, by all the variety of his operations, and in union with the multitude of other men, to pass into a unique gesture of communion. Whether he lives or dies, by his life and by his death, he in some way consumes his God, at the same time as he is dominated by him. In short, perfectly comparable to the Omega point that our theory predicted, Christ (provided that he discovers himself in the full realism of his Incarnation) tends to produce exactly the spiritual totalization that we expected.
In itself, the existence, even detached, of a state of consciousness endowed with such richness would bring, if it were well established, a solid verification of the views that we have exposed on the ultimate nature of human Energy. But it is possible to push the demonstration much further by observing that the appearance in Man of the Love of God, understood with the fullness that we give it here, is not a simple sporadic accident, but that it presents itself as the regular product of a long evolution.
¶ 7- Love-Energy
Of love we usually only consider (and with what refinement of analysis!) the sentimental side: the joys and sorrows that it causes us. It is in its natural dynamism and in its evolutionary significance that I find myself led to study it here, in order to determine the ultimate phases of the human phenomenon.
Considered in its full biological reality, love (that is to say, the affinity of being for being) is not special to Man. It represents a general property of all Life, and as such it embraces, in varieties and degrees, all the forms successively taken by organized matter. In Mammals, very close to us, we easily recognize it with its various modalities: sexual passion, paternal or maternal instinct, social solidarity, etc. Further away or lower on the Tree of Life, the analogies are less clear. They fade until they become imperceptible. But this is the place to repeat what I said about the “Inside of Things”. If, in a state that is undoubtedly prodigiously rudimentary, but already nascent, some internal propensity to unite did not exist, even in the molecule, it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher, in us, in the hominized state. In law, to ascertain with certainty its presence among us, we must suppose its presence, at least inchoate, in all that is. And, in fact, observing around us the confluent rise of consciences, we see that it is not lacking anywhere. Plato had already felt it, and immortally expressed it in his Dialogues. Later, with thinkers like Nicholas of Cusa, the philosophy of the Middle Ages technically returned to the same idea. Under the forces of love, it is the fragments of the World that seek each other out so that the World arrives. In this, no metaphor, — and much more than poetry. Whether it is force or curvature, the universal gravity of bodies, by which we are so struck, is only the reverse or the shadow of what really moves Nature. To perceive the “frontal” cosmic energy, it is necessary, if Things have an inside, to descend into the internal or radial zone of spiritual attractions.
Love in all its nuances is nothing other, nor anything less, than the more or less direct trace marked in the heart of the element by the psychic Convergence on itself of the Universe.
And there you have it, if I’m not mistaken, the ray of light that can help us see more clearly around us?
We suffer and worry when we see that modern attempts at human collectivization only result, contrary to the predictions of theory and our expectations, in a lowering and enslavement of consciences. — But what path have we taken so far to unify ourselves? A material situation to defend. A new industrial domain to open. Better conditions for a social class or for underprivileged nations… These are the only and mediocre grounds on which we have still tried to come together. What is surprising if, following animal societies, we mechanize ourselves by the very play of our association! Even in the supremely intellectual act of building Science (as long as it remains purely speculative and abstract) the impact of our souls operates only obliquely, and as if sideways. Contact still superficial, - and therefore danger of further servitude… Only love, for the good reason that only it takes and joins beings from the depths of themselves, is capable, - this is a fact of daily experience, of completing beings, as beings, by reuniting them. At what moment in fact do two lovers attain the most complete possession of themselves if not at the moment when in each other they say they are lost? In truth, the magic gesture, the gesture reputedly contradictory of “personalizing” by totalizing, does not love realize it at every moment, in the couple, in the team, around us? And what it thus operates daily on a reduced scale, why would it not repeat it one day on the dimensions of the Earth?
Humanity; the Spirit of the Earth; the Synthesis of individuals and peoples; the paradoxical Conciliation of the Element and the Whole, of Unity and the Multitude: for these things, called utopian, and yet biologically necessary, to take shape in the world, is it not enough to imagine that our power to love develops to the point of embracing the totality of men and the Earth?
Now, one might say, isn’t that precisely where you put your finger on the impossible?
All a man can do, is it not true, is to give his affection to one or a few rare human beings. Beyond that, in a larger radius, the heart no longer carries, and there is only room for cold justice and cold reason. To love everything and everyone: a contradictory and false gesture, which ultimately leads to loving nothing.
But then, I will answer, if, as you claim, a universal love is impossible, what does this irresistible instinct mean in our hearts which carries us towards Unity each time that, in any direction, our passion is heightened? Sense of the Universe, sense of the Whole: in the face of Nature, before Beauty, in Music, the nostalgia which takes hold of us, — the expectation and the feeling of a great Presence. Apart from the “mystics” and their analysts, how is it that psychology has been able to neglect so much this fundamental vibration whose timbre, for a trained ear, is distinguished at the base, or rather at the summit of all great emotion? Resonance to the Whole: essential note of pure Poetry and pure Religion. Once again, what does this phenomenon, born with Thought, and growing with it, betray if not a profound agreement between two realities which seek each other: the disjointed particle which quivers at the approach of the Rest?
With the love of man for his woman, for his children, for his friends, and to a certain extent for his country, we often imagined that we had exhausted the various natural forms of love. But from this list is precisely absent the most fundamental form of passion: that which precipitates one upon the other, under the pressure of a Universe which closes, the elements in the Whole. Affinity, and consequently the cosmic sense.
A universal love: not only is it psychologically possible; but it is also the only complete and final way in which we can love.
And now, this point established, how can we explain that always and more, in appearance, we see repulsion and hatred rising around us? If such a powerful virtuality besieges us from within for union, what is it waiting for to take action?
This is probably simply because, overcoming the “anti-personalist” complex, which paralyzes us, we decide to accept the possibility, the reality, of some Loving and Lovable One at the top of the World above our heads. As long as it absorbs or appears to absorb the person, the Collective kills the love that would like to be born. As such, the Collective is essentially unlovable. And that is where philanthropies fail. Common sense is right.
It is impossible to give oneself to the Anonymous Number. Let the Universe, on the other hand, take forward, for us, a face and a heart, let it personify itself, so to speak. And immediately, in the atmosphere created by this focus, the elementary attractions will find a way to flourish. And then, doubtless, under the forced pressure of an Earth that is closing in, the formidable energies of attraction still dormant between human molecules will burst forth. To our sense of the World, to our sense of the Earth, to our human sense, the discoveries made over the last century have brought, through their unitary perspectives, a new and decisive impetus. Hence the surge of modern pantheisms. But this impetus will only result in plunging us back into supermatter if it does not lead us to someone. For the failure which threatens us to be transformed into success, - for the conspiracy of human monads to take place, - it is necessary and sufficient that, extending our science to its ultimate limits, we recognize and accept, as necessary to close and balance Space-time, not only some vague existence to come, but also (and on this I still have to insist) the reality and the already current radiation of this mysterious Center of our centers which I have named Omega*.
Teilhard de Chardin
